Well, not quite. I just received an email from Google stating that Google “will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program.”
I wonder what Google has up its sleeves. DTO/DTR always felt like a neat idea without a lot of research common sense to back it up. Who downloads and watches videos online? Young people who grew up with the internet as a main source of entertainment and the tech savvy. Now, why would either of these groups pay to download and watch last week’s episode of CSI? I’d say the majority of computer literate young people know how to download whatever they want for free. And the tech savvy have probably already Tivo’d everything they could ever want to watch. DTO/DTR seemed to be a large undertaking without a lot of potential for profit.
In fact, awhile back I was reading that some at Google felt that the company was expanding too fast, getting into too many different areas and losing sight of the beauty that is Google: an awesome search engine.
So, what is Google planning in video? Well, the fact that they bought YouTube is very old news. My assumption is that Google has plans to integrate YouTube into their video services, much like they did with what was formerly known as Writely.com and is now known as Google Docs.
I’m always waiting for the next big thing from Google. Did I mention they gave me $5 for closing down DTO/DTR? And that, folks, is why Google’s my favorite brand.
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2 Comments
Hey, I don’t know how much you use amazon.com but they have a very similar program to google dto/dtr. It’s called Amazon Unbox and you get buy episodes of tv programs and rent or buy movies. It’s sweet, I use it a lot. I don’t have DVD player so this is a cool way for me to still rent movies. Just an idea.
Yeah, I remember you telling me about that. I’ll probably never use it though. I only used GoogleVideo a couple of times when I was rich and in a rush. But now I’m poor again, so I’m back to downloading from the internet and using the good ol’ VHS to tape eps of CSI